After 22 months, it's finally time to let the hair go. And you decide what happens to this blank canvas. Comb-over? Samurai topknot? Krusty the Clown?
Bad Hair for a Good Cause. You encourage me to do stupid things by donating money to humanitarian organizations. Let the voting begin . . .

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Important Things

In case the idea of doing crazy things to my hair overshadows the greater purpose here, I just wanted to remind you all of the cause for which I'm trying to raise money.

400,000 are now dead in Darfur and there looks to be no end in sight to the violent attacks carried out by the Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed militias. With violence now spreading across the border into Chad, the threat of widespread regional instability has increased. And yet, the international community has not stepped up and taken the strong actions it must. Sadly, the minimal effort that the United States has put in to addressing the genocide is far more than what political leaders throughout the rest of the world have done.

Hopefully last week's actions in the House will begin to generate momentum here in the US to take a bigger role in ending this tragedy. Of course, politicians will do nothing if people don't speak up. And unfortunately, as the U.N. special adviser on prevention of genocide said last week in comments comparing this genocide to the one in Rwanda, there's still a great amount of apathy towards action in the international community: "My sense is there's the same kind of wariness," Mendez told a news conference Friday. 'Let somebody else do it' is still very much in place."

Save Darfur.org noted earlier this week that Senator Paul Simon commented, in retrospect, with regards to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994: "If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

3 Comments:

I'm a huge fan of the cause at hand, and I'm very aware of the April 30 rallies not just in DC but also in SF, Chicago and Austin. Is there any way I could persuade you to extend the vote until April 30??? (I know, ironic after lobbying for a haircut starting about 20 months ago...) I just forwarded the blog to students active in the Save Darfur cause, and I think if you waited until April 30 you might be able to raise a ton more money...